Helping students understand why regrouping works is just as important as teaching the steps.
Instead of relying on one strategy, students benefit from seeing regrouping modeled in several ways. Place value drawings, place value disks, place value charts, and ...
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Teaching Rounding in 3rd Grade: Build Number Sense with Visual Models
Many students learn rounding by memorizing a rule like, "5 or more, raise the score." While that shortcut may help them remember the procedure, it doesn't always help them understand why a number rounds up or down.
Instead, give students visual models ...
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Teaching Place Value in 3rd Grade: Building Number Sense with a Place Value Math Mat
Place value is one of the most important concepts students learn in 3rd grade. When students understand that a digit's value depends on its position, they're better prepared for comparing numbers, rounding, and multi-digit addition and subtraction.
One of my favorite ways ...
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Teaching Place Value Relationships in 4th Grade: Multiplying & Dividing by Powers of 10
One of the biggest misconceptions students have in 4th grade is understanding what happens to a number when it is multiplied or divided by powers of 10.
Many students memorize shortcuts like "add a zero" or "move the decimal," but those tricks don't help them ...
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Multiplication Fact Strategies for 4th Grade Small Groups
When students reach 4th grade, multiplication facts are no longer a brand-new skill. But that doesn’t mean every student has mastered them.
Some students are still counting one by one. Others rely on drawing pictures for every problem. And some students know most of their ...
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Rounding Numbers in 3rd Grade
Like many other multi-step 3rd grade skills, rounding numbers in 3rd grade can be extremely complicated. Rounding requires so much attention to detail that its purpose is often lost in 3rd and 4th grade.
Rounding in one strategy that can help students make reasonable ...
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